Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Eastman Kodak Company today introduced the new KODAK EASYSHARE M590 Digital Camera, the ultimate social networking accessory for people who love to share their pictures. With Kodak's exclusive Share Button, consumers can tag pictures and videos directly on the camera for effortless uploading to popular social networking sites including FACEBOOK, KODAK Gallery, FLICKR, ORKUT and YOUTUBE. Pictures can also be tagged to email and to send to any KODAK PULSE Digital Frame. The new KODAK EASYSHARE M590 Digital Camera is the world's thinnest* 5X optical zoom digital camera. On top of its sleek, modern and stylish design, the camera also boasts advanced features including Kodak's Face Recognition feature that makes it simple for consumers to find and share the pictures they want, and Kodak's Smart Capture feature that helps them take better pictures automatically."

The KODAK EASYSHARE M590 (boy, WHAT'S with ALL the CAPS?) is an impressive 0.6 inches thin, and with 5x optical zoom (35mm to 175mm equivalent), that's quite slender. I'm less impressed with the 14 megapixel resolution - it seems Kodak is still playing the megapixel race, using a 1/2.3 inch CCD sensor. I'm also surprised to see a camera using microSD cards - I've never seen a laptop with a microSD card slot reader, so this means consumers will have to use a microSD to SD card adaptor...and that's just one more thing that can get misplaced. Are SD cards really so large that KODAK needed to move to the tiny microSD cards to get the camera this thin? Perhaps, but it's still a shame. On the plus side, the M590 has 720p h.264 video at 30fps, some smart tagging abilities for automatic upload to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and other sites when you connect the camera to your desktop PC, and ISO support up to 6400. I shudder to think how bad ISO 6400 would look on a sensor this small, but that's just the sensor-size-snob in me speaking up. Sometimes what matters is getting the photo, not how noise-free it is.

I wonder if that's the answer to the memory card question - perhaps KODAK's research tells them that most of their customers never take the memory card out of the camera, instead connecting the camera to their computer? This camera supports USB charging, just like the el-cheapo EASYSHARE camera that I bought last year, which makes connecting to a computer a recharging rather than discharging experience. I really want to see more USB charging featured on digital cameras - it's so much easier to pack a single cable than a separate battery charger.

The remainder of the press release, along with Read more...